While the New York Yankees and Minnesota Twins are expected to bludgeon each other with home run after home run in their series, the Tampa Bay Rays are going to attempt to cash in – no pun intended, Kevin – on their outlier status against the Houston Astros.
The Rays don’t hit much and won’t likely be able to go toe to toe with the Astros but they can pitch some. Actually, they can pitch a lot. Weirdly, too. But something odd happened down the stretch with the club that invented the concept of the “opener”: they used an “opener” just twice in 25 games down the stretch after utilizing it 41 times in their first 137 games, and they didn’t use it once after Sept. 10 en route to winning a berth in the wild-card game. I mean, seriously you figure this group out. Oh, and if you want further food for thought: the Rays were 4-3 against the Astros, just as they were in 2017 and 2018. They have won eight of nine season series between the clubs since 2008 and have nine shutouts in 48 games against the Astros since Houston was shuffled to the AL in 2013. The Rays’ winning record against the Astros the past three seasons makes them the first team in major league history to win the season series in three consecutive years against an opponent with 100 or more wins in each of those seasons. I don’t know. Maybe they have the Astros exactly where they want them.
Anyhow, with all these big boppers – the Twins led the majors with 307 homers, one more than the Yankees — and big arms, here are six players I think will be factors.
• Jose Altuve, Houston Astros: Flash back to the 2018 post-season when Altuve played eight post-season games with what turned out to be a fractured knee cap, slashing a modest .265/.324/.412 with one home run as the Astros were eliminated in the ALCS by the Boston Red Sox. It’s easy to forget his significance on a team with clutch hitters such as Alex Bregman and George Springer, a team made better by the shrewd off-season add of Michael Brantley and the wonder that is rookie Yordan Alvarez. But don’t be surprised if he continues to build on a second-half forget-me-not that saw him lead the AL in hits and total bases after the All-Star break while tying for third with 21 homers after a slow start to the season exacerbated by a hamstring injury. Beware a player with something to prove.
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• Nelson Cruz, Minnesota Twins: He has oodles of post-season experience: 16 home runs, 34 runs batted in and a .292 average in 16 games, appearances in two World Series (albeit in losing causes), an MVP award from the 2011 ALCS and at the age of 39, flirted with 50 homers, hitting 41 while missing 42 games. Yeah, 50 homers means less in this era of devalued dingers, but 39 might as well be 59 in a game that no longer rewards experience financially. The Twins crush left-handed pitching – take note Game 1 starter James Paxton, plus J.A. Happ and Zack Britton and Aroldis Chapman. OK, maybe not you Aroldis, but at any rate, 22 major-league hitters had an OPS of 1.000 or better against lefties with at least 100 plate appearances. Four were Twins, led by Cruz’s 1.207 OPS.
• Tyler Glasnow, Tampa Bay Rays: I mean, you could pick anybody off a pitching staff that gave up a major-league low 181 home runs, whose starters were second in the AL in ERA (3.64, behind the Astros) and whose bullpen led the majors with a 3.66 ERA and 10.67 strikeout per nine innings ratio. But with Charlie Morton out of commission until Game 3 after his work in the wild-card game, Glasnow will get the ball in Game 1 and the longer he and Blake Snell can go in their starts the easier it will be for Kevin Cash to manage from strength the one area in which his team has a clear edge over the Astros — the bullpen. Like Snell, who was limited to just three starts after undergoing arthroscopic elbow surgery, Glasnow was nursed back from a forearm strain suffered in May and was stretched out to 4 1/3 innings and 66 pitches in his last regular-season start against the Blue Jays. The Astros can hit velocity but if Glasnow is ticking 99 to 100 m.p.h in the first inning and can keep things tight — well, given how Cash manages pitching it opens up all sorts of opportunities for later in the series.
• Chad Green, New York Yankees: So let’s assume that it’s bombs away every day in this series, even though we know that statistically home runs decrease in number during the post-season (while accounting for a higher percentage of actual offence.) The Twins and Yankees both have question marks if not issues around their starting pitchers and while nobody will shed tears for Yankees manager Aaron Boone, his supply of useful power right arms has been severely damaged by Domingo German’s suspension for domestic assault and Dellin Betances’ still-born 2019, which saw a desperate September rehab cut short by an Achilles injury. Green will need to do some heavy lifting against the Twins’ righty-heavy lineup. Green, who overhauled his breaking ball during a stint in the minors, struck out 26 of 49 batters faced in September – he fanned 37 per cent of the batters he faced after the All-Star break — and is an option should Boone be forced to use an opener or need multiple innings or even two high-leverage outs. Some teams make a big deal of resting their starters to get ready for the post-season — Boone was unabashedly prudent with his bullpen. There’s a reason for it.
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• Zack Greinke, Houston Astros: You’d think he would play a bigger role in a longer series and the haul of prospects the Astros were willing to send to the Arizona Diamondbacks at the trade deadline suggested it was a long-term play aimed to take into account Gerrit Cole’s imminent departure as a free agent, but let’s be clear: if the Rays’ good pitching does allow them to sneak out of Houston with a win, then Greinke vs. Charlie Morton at Tropicana Field suddenly becomes huge in the here and now. Greinke and the analytics-heavy Astros are a perfect fit: Statscast credits him with throwing eight different pitches this season as he slips into his dotage by learning how to take advantage of naturally decreasing velocity. It will be interesting to see if anybody trots out some of Greinke’s critical comments about the Rays’ use of an opener and bullpen games, which he derided as a “sideshow” in 2018 when he accused the Rays of being cheap. The post-season has not always been kind to Greinke, who is among the active leaders in games started without a World Series appearance.
• Giancarlo Stanton, New York Yankees: Yeah, he’s still in the majors. We haven’t seen hide nor hair of Stanton for most of 2019, but it’s expected that he and Aaron Judge will both be on the lineup card for only the 15th time this season. The sense here is that no player has as much to lose this post-season as Stanton: his team won its first division title since 2012 and finished second in homers without any help from him — and this after a 2018 post-season in which he went 4-for-18 with no extra-base hits in an ALDS series loss to the eventual World Series-winning Boston Red Sox. A third of those at bats were strikeouts. Not a good way to endear yourself to a fanbase that usually only remembers October. Either way, this post-season could be great theatre.
• WHY CHEER FOR THE RAYS? They could be in Montreal in three years. Yes, those were members of a group of businessmen seeking to bring baseball back to Montreal accompanying Rays owner Stuart Sternberg to the wild-card game in Oakland. If that isn’t enough, well, a little post-season chaos is never a bad thing.
• WHY CHEER FOR THE ASTROS? Because their analytics department has a nasty surprise in store for you if you don’t. They know all of your inner secrets. They see all.
• WHY CHEER FOR THE YANKEES? It could be because you want to see Edwin Encarnacion and J.A. Happ get World Series rings. Fair play. Nothing wrong with that. Or perhaps it comes down to you having no soul.
• WHY CHEER FOR THE TWINS? C’mon. They’re the Twinkies. If they can pull this out after losing to the Yankees in the ALDS in 2003, 2004, 2009 and 2010 and overcoming a 0-13 post-season losing streak, anything is possible.
JEFF BLAIR’S PICKS: Astros in four. Yankees in four.
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